Teaching Methods: "From the Heart"
Practing, Writing, and teaching from the heart
Your teaching methods for this topic are one part practical and one part energetic— just like the heart. We would like to see you use the opportunity of writing and teaching about the heart to really work with and open up your own heart. Your essay may not be perfect, but if you use your practice along the path to it you can be sure that the real rewards will be abundant— the reward of growth. So let’s look at 3 aspects of this week’s work that can help you grow deeply from the topic: Practicing, Writing and Teaching from the Heart.
Bringing the Practice into the Heart of Your Life
The teachings of the yogic tradition are called Sastras. The root word is Sasa, which means discipline. This means that you can’t understand a teaching from the head, you have to understand it from the heart. The heart of your life and the heart of your practice.
“The root sasa means discipline. Sasana or Sastra means teaching containing rules for discipline. A Sastra or Sasana in India never meant merely an intellectual exposition of a particular system. It certainly expounded the fundamental principles of reality but at the same time laid down on the basis of t h e principles certain rules, certain norms of conduct which had to be observed by those who studied the particular Sastra. A Sastra was not simply a way of thought but also a way of life.”- Jai Deva Sangha, Shiva Sutras Preface
Learning to work with the heart of surrender means we have to bring our practice into the heart of our lives, both on and off the cushion. On the cushion we have the many guided practices of this section— from the levels of mantra, to the wish to grow, to working with the heart directly through visualization. Off our cushion, though, we must take strides to bring the practice into the heart of our day, into the midst of our busy lives.
The Shiva Sutras tell us that most people can access their heart when they begin a task, or begin their day— the enthusiasm of starting something new naturally brings us into the present. Most people also can feel their heart when they end a task, or end their day— the relief is palpable, and its easy to really feel the surrender. As Yogis we can use our practice to hold these moments of awareness in order to stretch them into the midst of our day. Taking the transition points slower, and working with them more consciously, in order to allow the nectar awareness to permeate closer to the middle of our lives and tasks.
“The yogī must prolong turya in such a way that its nectar becomes established and pervades not only in the beginning and the end but also in the middle of these three states. And the means to accomplishing this in all three states is to “hold it.” Hold it at the time of entry and hold it at the time of exit. This nectar of turya (turyarasa) must be properly held with full awareness so that it is expanded in the center of these three states. ” - Shiva Sutra 3.20
From there, the task also become brining your practice into the middle of your daily life. How can you bring your practice not just to the beginning and end of your day, but into the heart of your day? One mantra at a time.
There is no doubt that mantra is our greatest tool for navigating the choppy seas of our daily commute. Its a physical tool that has the capacity to not only train your mind to be present, but to open your heart to the glittery possibilities of spiritual growth. I say glittery because that is exactly what the Shiva Sutras promise from such a practitioner. The yogi who can bring the practice into the heart of their life is “Filled with the fragrance of the supreme glittering (sphuraṇa) of God consciousness” (3.22) Yes, you heard that correctly, the fragrance of glittering God consciousness. I think if you had to summarize the experience of the heart in one sentence that would be it.
To support you in this heroic endeavor I have put together a few audio tracks that can help you do more mantra without exhausting your ear buds or annoying your co-workers. Its called “MantranŌm”, its a metronome for mantra. Its super simple, but when applied over time has heroic potential. The beauty of the mantronom is in its subtlety, its not loud, its not even melodic, and that’s what lets it play in the background endlessly. Keep the track on while do dishes, work in the yard, walk the dog— let it play and play, and you’ll find infinite opportunities to do your mantra with it. But don’t just do mantra, bring that glittery God fragrance to the reality you find yourself within— let each one add a sparkle to your day.
Of course, couple this daily work with steady practice on your cushion, finding your heart through any of the methods we are working with in this section.
Free writing from the Heart
From there, we need to find our hearts when we write. This is an exciting opportunity. To put it simply, our heads get in the way when we write, there’s no getting around it. Imagine how easily you talk to someone on a daily basis, and then reflect on how hard it would be to write with even half of that ease. Writing may offer us the opportunity to perfect a thought, to create an angle into a topic, but boy does it take a lot from us along the way. If you are anything like me, or the many students of the past, you probably go through the ringer when you write— there’s another way, but it takes a little more commitment. The idea is that you have to allow yourself time to write that doesn’t have to be right, meaning, time where you can allow yourself to explore a topic without all the auto correct that occurs when its deadline time. Sit down and connect with your practice for a minute, and then read a satsang text, or sutra text, that pertains to your topic for 4-5 minutes. Try to stay in your heart while you read, take it slow. Then do a free write for 10 minutes. You can’t go back and erase anything, you just write for the whole ten minutes. If you feel yourself getting stuck in your head, pause the timer and reconnect with your practice, get your energy back down into the heart, and then restart the timer and keep writing.
Take a moment to walk away from the page at the end, but then come back and read it over to see where your energy is going within this topic. What did you want to write about? What came through? Try to respect what came through, and then do another free write with it in mind. If you digress, then let yourself digress, but come back to the topic when it seems possible. At the end of 10 conscious minutes, walk away, and then re-read, underlining what came through, where your passion lies with the topic.
That whole exercise took less than 30 minutes. So, the next day, do it again. Put in another 30 minutes. After those two days of free-writing, you will have an angle, a direction on your topic that doesn’t come from your head, but comes from your heart. From there, take your time and approach your 500 word essay in whatever manner feels best for you, but let your heart-soaked free writing sessions inform your topic, your angle, your quotes, even your experience of writing itself.
Teaching from the Heart
Teaching from our heart is an opportunity that is constantly overlooked at the expense of doing a good job. In the yogic tradition, teaching from the heart is the job we are here to do, everything else is secondary. This doesn’t mean you don’t prepare a talk, it means you work with your practice in your heart, you write from your heart, and when you present, you present from the heart. It means that the presentation isn’t separate from the content, it is a living expression of it.
Essentially, teaching is an opportunity to work with one of the highest practices of the yogic tradition— the Shambhavi Mudra, the practice of having one’s attention in the heart while conducting their lives on the outside. As we teach, our very state of being becomes the teacher, so we must pay attention to it like we do the words coming out of our mouth. This shouldn’t feel like a burden, but an incredible opportunity to expand the capacity of our practice.
“The Shambhavi Mudra is learning how to see inside with your eyes open. My name is Shambhavananda. It means to be immersed completely in your Inner Self while all five senses are working. You can’t close your eyes to the world and to the things that are of it. It is easy to close your eyes and daydream; it is more difficult to be present right here and now. You need to learn how you relate to the outer world. Being more in your heart won’t make you dysfunctional. It will make you more aware and more alert about what is going on around you. If you can learn how to keep your heart open and your eyes open, you will see a different world.” - Sri Shambhavananda
Is there a trick? Yes and no. There is no trick for surrender, but there are ways to help remind ourselves to do it.
To support you we will be doing mantra together before each presentation, led by your instructor so you can really just be in it.
We also recommend trying to breath through your nose while you present, as this will force you slow down and reconnect with the present while you talk. We recommend practicing this a little before hand if you really want it to be effective.
Also, for this presentation, build in opportunities to connect with your heart during the talk— take an extra breath after reading a quote, allowing your students to ‘absorb it’ while you reconnect. If you are talking about the heart center, for instance, have them touch their heart and take a slow breath— and you take the breath too, not just teach about it. Give yourself at least one or two ways to reconnect with your heart via the presentation itself.
And when you’re done, practice letting it all go. Because when it comes to the heart, there is not right or wrong, there is only growth. One of the best ways to do this is by offering up the merit of your practice to a deity, loved one, or Guru if that is a part of your practice. This keeps your energy rising, as you only want to offer them sweet things, not any tension.
So we see that the heart isn’t something we add into our presentation, but rather, is with us at every step of the process. As we learn to surrender and find our hearts within the context of our lives, and then apply that same level of practice to our preparation of the written material, we are setting the stage for an experience of teaching from the heart— where our state of being is allowed to shine through without the filters of our words. Of course, this is a practice we will be pursuing for a lifetime, but it has to start somewhere, and we believe that this topic is one of the greatest opportunities we will have for such an endeavor.